Namaste, mate!

Not long ago, English speaking classes sprouted up all over urban and small-town India. Many promised to teach an impeccable RP or an easy Southern drawl. Others peddled insights into the Western mind, presenting Euro-American culture (cinema, literature, slang, gastronomy, etc.) in encapsulated, easy to assimilate form. The boom still continues. A Canadian friend of mine has just returned from a stint in Bangalore, doing precisely this – teaching Indians about life and living in Canada. The clients of this industry are the now countless BPO sector employees who must greet you with a twang or a drawl or a cut-glass enunciation (depending on where you are) every time you call a helpdesk or information line from nearly anywhere in the West. Inevitably, the person at the other end will, rather unimaginatively and quite unnecessarily, adopt some far-to-common moniker like Jane or John. The idea is to blend into the culture of the people you are servicing.

This well-established trend has been the subject of much debate and discussion in academic, business, media and popular circles. Its upsides and downsides have even been addressed in some of Bollywood’s new-generation movies. But an incipient new trend has gone largely unnoticed. This is the trend of Western expatriates to India having to learn ‘Indian culture’ (see report). Their training, for the time being, seems to be just as superficial and frivolous as what is generally dished out at the many English ‘language and culture’ classes.

Among the things British babus are advised to learn is to say ‘namaste’, to abstain from greeting women with a kiss (Mr. Gere won’t forget that one in a hurry) and to expect unpunctuality. It seems that the boot is on the other foot now. I am reminded here of something Rudyard Kipling (of Jungle Book fame) wrote. A little ditty that is part of a larger poem, this bit of Brit wit goes:

Now it is not good for the Christian’s health to hustle the Aryan brown,
For the Christian riles, and the Aryan smiles and he weareth the Christian down;
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of the late  deceased,
And the epitaph drear: “A Fool lies here who tried to hustle the East.”

All these decades later, the UK India Business Council’s advice seems remarkably similar. Perhaps the boot is still firmly on the foot it always was on, after all.